Only By Degrees
by Fellowshipper
Summary: Following the events of Uncanny 394, Jean reflects on her marriage - and "the kiss."


**Title:** Only By Degrees

**Notes:** ... Wow. Another plotless wonder from me, yay! It's developing into a habit, I think. But even though I'm sure everyone's read/heard about 394, if you haven't, consider this a spoiler warning. Nothing major, but eh. 

**Disclaimer:** Marvel owns the characters used. Coke owns the syrupy stuff at the bottom of the two-liter that inspired this. 

******

I'm not sure why I'm doing this. I'm not even sure how, since my telekinesis has been long gone, only recently returned for reasons I can't begin to imagine. Nonetheless, it gives me a chance to do something I haven't had a chance to accomplish for quite some time. 

I can now, thanks to the telekinetic gift of flight, reach the very top shelves in the kitchen. 

I don't know why I let Remy and Scott and everyone taller put the groceries up where I can't reach them without mutant powers. I do a great deal of the cooking here; it seems like a rather reasonable idea to have everything within reach. 

So why am I in here at barely four in the morning? 

Sunday is the one day of the week when we're guaranteed to not be forced into training if we don't want to, though Scott tries endlessly to get us in the Danger Room anyway. It's the one day where hardly anyone wanders into the kitchen before ten or eleven a.m. I'd like to know why I decided to come in here this early and reorganize the boxes and cans and bags and whatever else is in here. 

Oh, I remember now. The dreams. 

I wouldn't call them nightmares, exactly. They don't frighten me. They make me feel . . . guilty, I suppose. It's been a week and I'm still reeling over the problems Warp Savant caused. It was bad enough to find myself in a situation I didn't have a clue on how to get out of, but he had a power that was virtually impossible to fight. I didn't think there was a way to combat it, much less reverse. I'm used to being trapped in others' consciousness, their thoughts and mental presence, but never have I been remotely subjected to something like that, being caught in someone else's actual mind, seeing their dreams, hopes, and fears all come together before my eyes. 

In the short seconds before his fear overpowered me, I learned quite a few things about the kid. His real name was Matthew Carter. His friends, what few he'd managed to keep, called him Matt. He was a heroin addict who had already been in rehab twice, but his parents eventually stopped paying for the treatment when they realized that two weeks after being released, he'd be at it again. He'd wanted to be an attorney when he was younger, a decision brought about by his love for arguments and a passion for instigating fights. He really wasn't a bad kid growing up. He was scared of heights and roller coasters made him queasy. He was still in love with a young girl named Carrie, who left him for an older, smarter boy, a student at Stamford. His father had a temper and a weakness for cheap whiskey, which created quite a dangerous combination, one he often took out on his son. His father scared him. 

All of these thoughts rushed through my head as soon as I found myself locked inside his mind, and I was beginning to think I had a grasp of who he really was just as his fears and nightmares came to life. You never truly know a person until you know what they're afraid of most in the world. Logan told me that once. He's right. 

I didn't have time to try to figure out how to defend myself before every fear he had surfaced. The immediate danger, at least to me, was that my telepathy heightened my sixth sense, I guess you could say, and I was able to pick up on everything the boy felt. He wasn't exactly insane, but unstable without a doubt. He put on a brave act to keep others from seeing he was scared inside, the typical route of new enemies. 

Still, stuck there, I felt everything he felt, and despite his snappy comments and apparent madness, he was terrified. Of everything. Of life. I'm by no means an empath, but being telepathic and forced with feeling his rawest thoughts and emotions mingling all around me, inside me . . . I panicked. I became as agitated as he was, and twice as frightened. 

Maybe that's why I reacted the way that I did. Logan was in his natural element, dealing with matters as he always does; he preyed on the kid's unease and internal terror. I, on the other hand, had never dealt with anyone like him, and I let his fear consume me. 

Maybe that's why I didn't pull away from Logan when he kissed me. 

I didn't want to kiss him. I didn't want him to kiss me. That's what I told myself then, and I still tell myself now. Though, at four in the morning and trying to decide where to place a box of Rice-A-Roni, I'm not entirely certain what I believe. I do know that things have become infinitely more confusing. 

Wolverine thankfully hasn't said anything about the kiss. He didn't have to. I'm sure Scott already knows. Even without the psychic rapport I share with him, he knows how to read me as surely as I know how to read myself. He knows something happened while Logan and I were trapped together. He just doesn't have the willpower to ask what it was. Or maybe he just doesn't want his suspicions to be confirmed. 

It shouldn't even be an issue for me. Scott's my husband and I love him dearly, period. Logan is my friend and I love him as well, but not in the way I love Scott. The kiss is simply something to be discarded the same as I have begun letting go of the entire incident. 

It just isn't happening. 

The kiss was an accident, a last effort to gain some semblance of comfort before the world came crashing to a halt. The last couple to do that was Rogue and Gambit, and everyone knows how many problems that caused. That was different, though. They were in love and couldn't touch. Logan and I can, but we're not in love. I'm not. 

I love Scott. 

He loves me, too. 

So why am I still here organizing cabinets? 

The dreams. That's right. I'm still dreaming of that kiss. It's somewhat . . . disconcerting to know that my last moment alive could very well have been spent locked in a passionate kiss with someone other than my husband. It should probably disturb me more than it truly does. 

Scott and I are happily . . . we're married, and I don't see why I should be thinking of another man so intimately. Yes, we argue, we have fights, but why, after all this time, would I suddenly start wondering what might have happened had I taken a different path? 

No. I won't think about this. 

Logan is everything Scott opposes, and everything I think he wants to be, deep down beneath the calm, aloof exterior. Logan is brash and opinionated, rude at times due to a brutal honesty. He's wild, untamable. I imagine that's what draws me to him. He's uninhibited, something I can never be for fear of losing control and being tempted to be something I'm really not.

At this point, though, I'm not altogether sure who I really am. 

As I said earlier, Scott knows something is wrong, but it's the not knowing that's killing him. We've been experiencing the same troubles every marriage faces lately, but being forced to deal with this has made him even more distant than before. I wouldn't say our marriage is shaky, exactly, but we _are_ drifting apart, and it hurts. 

What hurts more is that rather than facing the problem and correcting it, I'm running away from it and dwelling on it. 

Do I realize Scott and I are beginning to lose touch with one another? Yes. Do I worry about it? In a way, but not much. Every marriage has problems. 

Then again, most major happenings in life happen not all at once, but only by degrees. It's a frightening thought, honestly. Logan is a dear friend, nothing more, nothing less. I know this, and there is no doubt in my mind about that. 

But why can't I convince my heart of that? Why can't I dictate to it what my common sense and every scrap of morality knows? I'm married to Scott. I love Scott. Thinking of any man but Scott is wrong, simply put. I know that. 

Then why am I still thinking of that kiss? 

And why, of all things, am I flattered that Logan would spend what he believed to be his last breath on me? 

I'm rambling, I know. I don't keep a journal, since my last one was uncovered by Jubilee, who felt the need to Xerox the thing and sell it for ten dollars a copy to the various splinter groups. So, I ramble in my head. I just hope that I don't broadcast my thoughts. Chamber has yet to develop his telepathy to the point he can truly master it enough to pick up something from another telepath. The professor certainly knows what I'm going through, but I trust him not to go selling my torment for a cheap buck. I would not, however, put it above Emma, who claims she's no longer telepathic. So I keep my thoughts locked tight, never once speaking about that kiss and the emotions it stirred. 

I wish I could. I truly wish I could confide in someone, but for the life of me, I can't force myself to do it. Scott and I are . . . Bobby called us the Luke and Laura of the X-family, and as such we have a responsibility to be happy with each other and pretend nothing's wrong when it feels as though my conscience is going to get into a knockdown dragout with my heart. 

I wish with every part of me that I could be sure which would win in the end. 


End file.
